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The New South— 

An Inside View 



An Address delivered before the Congregational 

Club, Kingsley Hall, Boston, March 

the twenty-third, 1908. 



By William Holcombe Thomas 



The New South— 

An Inside View 



An Address delivered before the Congregational 

Club, Kingsley Hall, Boston, March 

the twenty-third, 1908. 



By William Holcombe Thomas 

'I 



Montgomery, Ala.: 

The Paragon Press 

1908 






\ut,lior 

Partoa) 



s 



The New South — an Inside View 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: 

When Matthew Arnold wrote of Emerson as "the 
friend and aider of those who would live in the Spirit," 
he pointed to a New England characteristic that has se- 
cured for the South common heritage with you in a lit- 
erature which made the world your debtor. 

Yet not quite half a century has passed since there 
arose between us a debate of paramount importance to 
this Nation that was fought to a conclusion with equal 
earnestness. In his dispassionate review the historian 
will neither overlook the discharge of duty as each side 
saw it ; nor that each side was necessary to write into law 
what patriots could not put into a Constitution, 
fro their insistence showed the world the strength 
of our Nation, and gave conviction that the Union would 
withstand conflicting sectional views. Accepting the re- 
sponsibilities cast upon the South, with a big hearted 
honesty of purpose, her sons set themselves to the task 
of "guiding and controlling as best they could the vicious 
and irresponsible of either race." 

Before the Boston Merchants' Association, eighteen 
years ago, Mr. Grady made the argument for the South 
then necessary, now taken largely as a matter of fact. 
In it he says of what he calls the South's problem : "Can 
we solve it? The God who gave it into our hands alone 
can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do 
know, we cannot solve it with less than the knowledge 
that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood — and 
that when we have done our best, whether the issue be 
lost or won, we feel your strong arm about us and hear 
the beating of your approving hearts." The hope he 
then expressed we yet entertain. As a people you have 



— 2— 

more fully come to appreciate our difficulties and our 
trials, — as a people we have come to more fully under- 
stand your desires and your aspirations, — each has a 
fixed purpose that the right should prevail through a 
high-minded honesty that the one must accord to the 
other. 

When one undertakes to speak with certainty of the 
future of millions of men he is destined to disappoint- 
ment and failure, for the questions entering into their 
lives are bigger than the brain of any man. 

The standard of the negro in the Northern mind, I 
fear, is fixed by the mixed bloods, or mulattoes, and not 
by the men who makes up the average of the negro race. 

If the Northern mind is not affected by the mixed- 
blood negroes with whom, I take it, you come largely in 
contact, it is influenced by the most ambitious and intel- 
ligent of that race, who do not represent the average 
Southern negro. 

Some intelligent people at the North do not under- 
stand the relation of the races in the South and make 
statements that irritate rather than ameliorate condi- 
tions. As example a recent clipping from the New 
Haven Register makes a professor of Columbia Uni- 
versity say : "The negro is fast disappearing in the South 
because of the inter-marriage of blacks and whites." 
Commenting thereon the Register adds : "It is impossible 
to suppose that they find any alliance with any whites 
of the South outside of the class known as poor whites." 
Such suggestion and even its discussion are productive 
of no good feeling between the races. The low-class 
negro does not expect miscegenation, the better class 
of negroes do not want it ; and no class of the whites will 
have it. Race purity is an instinct with the "poor whites 
as well as a virtue and ideal." 

With sincerity I trust, and in all kindness I may say, 
it is impossible to know by a casual study the conditions 
at the South and the questions confronting us. Indeed 



many years of residence there will present new features. 
It has been suggested that the negro problem be made a 
national one. In my candid judgment the holding out of 
the hope that he is to be the ward of the Nation will but 
disturb as false promises and vain hopes of the past 
have done. Thrift and personal worth are the only means 
to progress. You cannot emancipate a human being, he 
must emancipate himself; then in turn the individuals 
of a race must emancipate that race. The individuals of 
no other race can do it. You can not legislate a people 
into power, they must have power to take and hold for 
themselves; and as little can a statute put learning or 
morals into individual lives. Let the negro not forget 
the fundamental fact that in all the long process of effort 
and character growth for every man and every nation 
and every race each has a natural right to attain and will 
attain as physically and morally fitted. In proportion 
as the negro increases his productivity and is 
frugal and industrious, he will make for him- 
self a property independence; just in proportion 
as he is honest, virtuous and thoughtful, he will 
build for himself a good name that will be ap- 
preciated by the white man. This for him as an indi- 
vidual and a race is the philosopher's stone. The South 
cannot give it to him; the North cannot find it for him. 
He must search within himself with the light he him- 
self provides. 

Every race as every individual must have its day — 
dreams and walk the misunderstood and lonely way to 
success. Had it not been for his years of preparation 
and his vision, as on lonely mountain sides he tended 
Jethro's flock, and for forty years retraced mistaken 
ways, Moses never would have come to Pisgah. 

The only way to safely make a child a nation's ward 
is to make every child a ward of the nation. If not, you 
deny aspirations, break ideals, and obscure visions. The 
soul of the favored ward dies the patronizing pensioner 



for the lack of climbing hill-tops to catch the glory of the 
mountain that he is impatient to possess. The govern- 
ment can patronize only by passing a non-sectarian com- 
mon school appropriation according to illiteracy to be 
disbursed by each State and Territory through its educa- 
tional departments without interference with their pres- 
ent mode of maintaining public schools, only requiring of 
them a just apportionment of the funds. 

It might as well be understood that the white man and 
the negro together make up the citizenship of our South- 
ern country, and any effort to deal with either ignor- 
ing the other will diminish the chances of ultimate suc- 
cess. That religion and sentiment, — the fixed ideals and 
prejudices, if you please, of the South are sub- 
stantial facts that cannot be ignored and must always 
be reckoned with. The negro is met with race preju- 
dice in the South, not hatred, let me insist, this 
feeling is not from the viewpoint of the business 
at which he is about and for which he is fitted. At the 
North, it is said that the door of industrial opportunity is 
more thoroughly closed to him by a race prejudice. If 
he is looking for a section of the United States where 
he will be regarded and judged as a man and not as a 
negro-man, can he find it more readily in the 
North than in any other section of this Union? "For 
that abstract and transient fact of slavery" says Toc- 
queville, "is fatally united to the physical and permanent 
fact of color." Jefferson also says: "Nothing is more 
clearly written in the book of destiny than the emanci- 
pation of the blacks; and it is equally clear that the two 
races will never live in a state of equal freedom under 
the same government, so insurmountable are the bar- 
riers which nature, habit and opinions have established 
between them." I quote this authority in kindness 
and not for humiliation, but to show it is no 
new idea that there is race prejudice, and that it is not 
the growth of one section. Nor is it alone of one race 



— 5- 



against any other one race — it exists in all races. The 
question of the Oriental in the West is not economic, it 
is concomitant with color and racial difference. 

The negro's development has not carried his race 
beyond superstition. He has great religious fervor that 
has not yet raised his morals, as a vv^hole, to what they 
should be. In reply he will say that since the Civil War 
the white man at the South has not made any general 
effort to direct the religious thought of the race. You 
may be sure there are churches and white ministers at 
the South who have pointed to this field for religious 
training, still difficult to be reached. 

The Protestant Episcopal Church has white and negro 
ministers doing work among the negroes. 

The last Synod in Alabama directed its members "to 
avail themselves of every opportunity to preach to the 
negro." The General Assembly of the Southern Presby- 
terian Church maintains the Stillman Institute for educa- 
tion of negro preachers. Last year through the Commit- 
tee of Colored Evangelization they reported $15,000 to 
Stillman Institute for a new building, and "that the 
church give the cause of Colored Evangelization $50,- 
000, it having given for the first time in the history of 
that committee the full amount asked for * * *." 
(Minutes 1907, page 28.) 

Dr. Crumpton, Corresponding Secretary of the State 
Board of Missions for the Alabama Baptists, says: 

"For the help that we extend to the theological de- 
partment of the Selma University, the Secretary is con- 
stantly receiving evidences of appreciation from the col- 
ored brethren all over the State. 

We firmly believe the hope of the colored people is in 
their ministry. If they are trained, pious and conse- 
crated, they can lead their people into a purer and bet- 
ter life. 

The children of the generation of white people now 
rapidly passing away should not allow the children of 
the slaves, who were so faithful to their parents, to be 
destroyed bodj^ and soul, when the gospel of Jesus would 



— 6— 

save them from their sins. The greatest missionary field 
on earth for Southern Baptists is right here among the 
descendants of the slaves, whose unremunerated toil 
made the South rich. We believe the old time feeling of 
the negro towards the whites would come back, if we 
would protect him from evil men of both races and give 
to him the gospel of Christ." 

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, has had no 
negro ministers or members of her communion since 
1865, yet thinking that the best way to touch the religious 
life of the negro is through members of his own race. For 
twenty years it has maintained the Payne and Lane 
Institute, at Augusta, for the education of negro preach- 
ers, and from time to time has helped a similar institution 
in Mississippi. 

Dr. Hamill, Superintendent of the training work of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, says: "I think the 
time has come when our Southern white churches should 
turn again toward the negro and help him as far as pos- 
sible to a knowledge of pure and undefiled religion, after 
the example of such ministry as that of Capers and An- 
drew to the slaves. If I find any fault with ourselves 
in our relationship with the negro, it is that we too 
easily conceded that the negro's moral and religious in- 
terests should be taken out of our hands since the war 

Two movements on the part of the negro in his evolu- 
tion as a race must be noted ; — the one, an effort or strug- 
gle to fit himself to do what is demanded of him as a 
part of the commercial order; the other may be termed 
a "complaint" on account of what is not yet demanded of 
him in the South, and for which the South thinks he is not 
yet fitted. He demands the higher education when his race 
has yet to learn fundamentals. Of course, he may have 
Greek if he learns it, yet it is more important for his 
race to see that the white man, (I believe) is neglecting 



— 7— 

it, for that which is more in touch with the lives of the 
body of our citizenship. To negro educators, I would com- 
mend a most earnest study of President Roosevelt's re- 
cent words to the Department of Superintendents, of 
National Educational Association, as follows: 

"I trust that more and more of our people will see to it 
that the schools train toward and not away from the 
farm and workshop. We have spoken a great deal about 
the dignity of labor in this country, but we have not acted 
up to our spoken words; for in our education we have 
tended to proceed upon the assumption that the edu- 
cated man was to be educated away from and not toward 
labor. 

"One thing that I would like to have you teach your 
pupils is, that whether you call the money gained salary 
or wages, does not make any real difference, and that if 
by working hard with your hands you get more than 
if you work with your head only, it does not atone for 
it to call the smaller amount salary. The term dignity 
of labor implies that manual labor is as dignified as men- 
tal labor; as of course it is. Indeed, the highest kind 
of labor is that which makes demands upon the qualities 
of both head and hand, of heart, brain and body." 

How the negro will work out his destiny along these 
lines will depend on how well he knows himself, his 
deepest needs, his weakness and strength, and the con- 
ditions of which he is a fixed part. 

Speaking in general terms, I may say that the South 
will not accord him some privileges she regards as fun- 
damental, which he has in other sections; yet she has 
given him opportunity to earn an honest living, to prove 
his worth, and in almost every township has provided 
him a school and helped to build him churches. The 
monies sent by the North for his education do not com- 
pare in amount with that the South has expended in 
that cause, regardless of the small tax values of his prop- 
erty. And our Legislatures have uniformly rejected 
propositions to pro-rate educational appropriations on 



the "tax-value basis" between the races, or to tax the ne- 
gro's educational institutions or properties. 

We have tried to deal to him justice w^ith the consid- 
eration of the strong- for the weak, to protect him from 
the ills of the unscrupulous, and have often relieved him 
from the fruits of his own folly. 

Realizing the great question that confronts the intel- 
ligence of the South, and the welfare of its mixed citizen- 
ship, realizing the weakness of the illiterate and vicious 
as a constant menace to our civilization, a great moral 
wave has sprung up in the South and extended its influ- 
ence far into the North, promising in a large measure 
to elevate the moral plane of citizenship, to reduce crime, 
and to encourage a spirit of thrift and material develop- 
ment. The chief expression of this reform is the regula- 
tion and prohibition of the sale of alcoholic drinks. 

Dr. Crumpton tells in his report to his church how this 
legislation was regarded by some leaders of the negro 
race as follows: 

"The tidal wave of temperance reform, which is 
sweeping over the State is meeting with a hearty re- 
sponse from the more intelligent of their race. We be- 
lieve that the whiskey and cocaine habit is destroying the 
best labor on earth for the cotton planters. One of their 
great leaders, in a pathetic appeal, in behalf of his race, 
said : 'We negroes make no laws, we construe no laws, 
we execute no laws. No board of aldermen, no judge or 
jury would establish saloons on the recommendation of 
negroes. The negro brute is the product of the white 
man's gambling hells, low dives and saloons, where he 
is dehumanized, brutalized and licensed to go through the 
land, a demented brute, to com.mJt outrages on fair 
women. Our black arms are too short. The long, Anglo- 
Saxon arms only can reach him." 

When the divorce investigations are finally made pub- 
lic you will find the large number in the South on among 
negroes to whom we liberally construe the statute. As 
example a negro woman when served as respondent said 



— 9— 

to the process office: "Tell the judge he's got a nndder 
wife, and I done got a nudder husband. What more do 
dat nigger want?" The court granted to both an abso- 
lute divorce. 

The vagrant laws are honestly enforced, driving from 
the streets many idle, drinking, gambling, prostituting 
characters of both races. 

The false pretense statute (as amended by acts, Ala- 
bama 1903, p. 345) as follows: "And the refusal or 
failure of any person who enters unto any such con- 
tract to perform such acts or service or refund such 
money or pay for such property without just cause shall 
be prima facie evidence of the intent to injure or defraud 
his employer," has been twice sustained by the Supreme 
Court of Alabama, though such statute has been held 
unconstitutional in South Carolina. 

It has come to be recognized by many thinkers that 
the granting of the franchise to the unprepared negro 
was an error of a time of excitement and political pre- 
judice. Many patrits believe that the organic laws 
of the Southern States, eliminating the ignorant and the 
vicious, are both wise and commendable as a step 
towards a higher and better civilization. It must be 
understood, however, that in a right administration of 
these laws limiting the franchise, the door of hope is 
not closed to those who would prepare themselves for 
intelligent citizenship. If it be insisted that they are ar- 
bitrarily enforced, I believe that generally there will be 
such enforcement as makes for good government at the 
South, and in the future will bring a justice that will ad- 
mit to the electorate those fitted and reject the vicious and 
unworthy. Out of such laws came a feeling among the 
white men at the South that cannot be better 
stated than did ex-Governor Jelks in one of his mes- 
sages, as follows: 

"While we have a more respectable electorate, under 



—10— 

the new Constitution there is doubly a duty now rest- 
ing on the white people who make and execute the laws, 
to see that that portion of our citizens deprived of the 
privilege of voting are allowed liberty of person, safety 
of limb and the rights of property, enjoying these bless- 
ings as fully and freely as the whitest man of the State." 

Ray Stannard Baker says that he finds one of the 
complaints made by the negro against the South is "dif- 
ficulty in getting justice in the Courts, * * * and in 
some localities, the danger of actual violence." I believe 
my conduct as an official toward the negro is but that of 
every other trial judge of the State, and I cannot better 
illustrate than by saying that in my first charge to a 
Grand Jury in 1901, are found the following words : "Deal 
equally and justly with all classes; the rich not more fa- 
vorably than with the poor, the strong not more carefully 
than the weak, the black man not more readily than with 
the white man. * * * * ^j^ even justice 
should not be affected by the color of a man's face, by 
the bulk of his material wealth, by the weight of his 
influence, but notes only the purpose of his heart." Again 
some years later, — "The killing of a person of standing, if 
unlawful, is no greater crime than would be the unlaw- 
ful killing of some poor unknown. * * * Remember 
then, that it is as great a crime for one man to kill not 
in self-defense, as for another; and that it is as great a 
crime for one man to be unlawfully killed as for another 
* * * Let the murderer be indicted according to the 
law and the evidence, whether he be black or white." This 
language was taken as a matter of fact by the juries, and 
was but what Southern white men expected of me as 
an official. 

The negro's wrongs are generally righted by the 
courts even though a white man is involved against him, 
for he can always rely on his employer or landlord to 
help him. I could multiply examples at length would 
time permit. 



—11— 

Of course, in a suit with an intelligent white man 
against an ignorant negro the latter is at a disadvantage 
before the juries, but at no greater disadvantage than 
would be an ignorant white man against the same oppon- 
ent. 

After an experience of seven years as a trial judge 
of all felonies and the graver misdemeanors, I have found 
but few cases where juries have not given the negro jus- 
tice. And I have known of white men convicted on the 
testimony of negroes and punished for their crimes ; and 
of negroes found not guilty when those testifying against 
them were white men. We know his surroundings, his 
character, his desires and his weaknesses, and from his 
testimony we can generally tell where the truth is. 
Though he be friendless the courts look sharply to the 
justice of the cause, because of his helplessness and pov- 
erty. I believe I can say in the main the negro has his 
day in the courts of the South. 

As for his being in "danger of actual violence," I 
think the charge and such fear, if entertained, are 
groundless. The white man does not kill the negro, nor 
the negro the white man as often as the negro kills the 
negro at the South. 

In this connection I will repeat what I said last year 
in Nashville in a study of the cause of increasing crime 
in the United States as it has application to the negro's 
part: 

"Is it a question of racial difference? Texas, with a 
population of 2,500,000 white and 625,000 negroes, has 
about the same number of homicides as Alabama, Lou- 
isiana and South Carolina, with 2,688,371 white and 2,^ 
760,432 negroes; while in Nevada, with only 134 negroes 
and 1,520 Chinese, in a population of 42,333 the homi- 
cides are 39, the highest rate in the United States. That 
of Maryland, having four times as many whites as col- 
ored, is as great as Louisiana, where the races are near- 
ly equal. 

LOFC 



—12— 

The Pacific States, with four percentum of popula- 
tion colored, have a much higher rate than the Southern, 
with thirty-eight percentum negroes. 

The census bulletin presenting statistics of homicides 
in the United States in 1891 prepared by Mr. Wines, 
shows that of 7,386 prisoners in the United States, June 
1st, 1890, charged with homicide, 4,425 were white, 2,- 
739 negroes, 94 Chinese, 1 Japanese and 92 Indians. 
Lombroso, making comment thereon said: *If we 
are to accept the statement that 60 per cent, of the hom- 
icides are furnished by the whites and the remaining 
40 per cent, by the colored race, it must be remembered 
that the former constitute 88 per cent, of the population 
and the latter but 12 per cent. ; therefore, it is clear that 
were it not for the negro population the crime of homi- 
cide would be almost as rare in the United States as it is 
in the most civilized countries of Europe. The colored 
race furnishes to the statistics of this crime proportion- 
ately more than five times as many cases as the whites, 
in other words am.ong the former there are 45 homicides 
to every 100,000 inhabitants, while among the latter there 
are but 8 to every 100,000.' 

Unfortunately the negro at the South holds v.'ith too 
little regard the life of his colored neighbor when anger- 
ed by him, I do not, however, agree with the view ex- 
pressed 'that if it were not for the presence of the ne- 
gro, homicide would be almost as rare in the United 
States as it is in the most civilized countries of Europe," 
for three reasons : First. That the highest rates of 
homicide are in the Pacific States where only a small per 
cent, of negroes live. Second. If one should charge to 
the negro five-sixths and to the whites one-sixth of the 
homicides committed, as stated by Lombroso, there 
would be 1,976 homicides annually that he admits were 
committed by the whites, and if then we deduct the ne- 
gro population from the total population it would still 
give the whites a rate per million of more than Austria 
or Belgium, five times as much as Germany, three times 
that of England, and twice that of France or Japan. 
However, the fact is there were 4,425 white homicidal 
prisoners, at the time above given, to a white popula- 
tion of ^ 66,990,000, or 66 white homicidal prisoners per 
million white population, which is three times, (or more) 



—13— 

as bad as that of most European Countries except Italy 
and Spain, and exceeds that of Spain by 32 per cent. 
Third. It may also be suggested as a reason why his fig- 
ures would not present the exact condition in the United 
States, that his percentage is based on the whole num- 
ber of prisoners convicted of homicides, yet it takes no 
consideration of the fact that the white man, having the 
advantage of education, wealth, and influence was the 
better prepared to make excuse for his conduct, hence 
was not so often indicted by grand juries, or after in- 
dictment convicted and imprisoned." 

If the violence above referred to be the "fear of peon- 
age," this has been shown to be an occasional wrong in 
remote agricultural and lumbering districts, and in each 
instance it was stamped out by Southern juries under 
fearless Southern judges. I believe that peonage should 
not be countenanced for a moment, yet I fear that at the 
time these prosecutions were magnified by special-fea- 
tured news reports too much emphasizing restraint of 
the negro laborer and failing to note that it extended to 
the Scandinavian laborers. I mean by this to say that I 
feel the country at large got too much the impression that 
it was "a 'practice" and not "an occasional wrong" on the 
part of the white man against the negro, when as a matter 
of fact, it was not "a practice," but an "occasional wrong" 
against the Scandinavian laborers as well as against the 
negro laborers. You will agree with me that ninety 
cases reported of our millions of contracts will prove it 
to be an occasional wrong, and not a practice. I believe, 
however, along with all the good these investigations ac- 
complished also came an unsettling influence affecting to 
some degree the general relation of trust between the 
landlord and tenant of the South. Not that the landlord 
or employer wished to hold his tenant or employee by 
undue force, but that he feared, lest after he had ex- 
pended large sums to start the tenant on the way of hia 
crop, or in transportation of the employee he should 
fail to comply with his contract. On the other 



-14— 



hand, in some sections the tenant or laborer got 
the impression, from his second-hand knowledge of 
the extent and result of the peonage cases, that he was 
at liberty to get what he could from the landlord or 
employer, and cease to labor when he willed. It haa 
only been a short time since the actual trials of these 
cases, and I am glad to say I can see that this feeling of 
distrust is largely being dissipated. In what I have said I 
would make plain that I am in no sense defending this 
wrong, for I strongly condemn it, and did so in a charge 
to my grand jury. 

Mr. Justice Denson, now of our Supreme Court, while 
Circuit Judge in an exhaustive charge on peonage to a 
Tallapoosa county grand jury, said: " * * * guch 
conduct deserves and I am sure it receives the most pro- 
nounced condemnation of all good citizens. I assert with- 
out any hesitancy that the people of this county do not 
condone the crime but condemn it as soundly as do any 
of our critics and this sentiment prevails without respect 
to whom the persons are that committed the crime. 
* * *" 'YYie South welcomes the investigation about 
to be made. If there is no pyactice of peonage the world 
should know it, if it does exist we should know it and 
will put it out. 

Between the negro and the white man of the South 
there generally prevails a good will. The one needs 
labor, the other financial help, judgment, and lessons 
of self-restraint. As fast as the negro is able to get and 
hold, he finds some white man who will sell him the 
land, though it is yet the exception rather than the rule 
for him to desire or to be financially able to 
buy land. If in some Southern States they try 
to fasten him to the soil by labor laws, you may 
be sure the ever increasing demand for his la- 
bor and the consequent desire of the adjacent 
landowner for his services are his protection. The status 
of landlord and tenant is no unwilling relationship. 



—15— 

The census report will tell of his wonderful development 
and acquisitions of property that could not have come 
from an unwilling relation. If a landlord has ''bought 
him out" at the beginning of the year, it is because the 
negro has lived beyond his ability to pay his previous 
landlord, but is still able to made the new landlord think 
he has the capacity and will to work. He can move at the 
end of the year, and only when he elects to move within 
the year does he have trouble with labor contract and 
false pretense laws. He usually performs the contract 
undertaken at the beginning of the year; and if he does 
not, the landlord does not usually prosecute unless he 
has taken up much in "advancements" or has made sev- 
eral contracts for the same period. 

As the negro has risen above the majority of his race 
to a profession, his field of operation among the mil- 
lions of his race is commensurate with his ability. I 
should think the negro with a profession in the North 
would find it difficult to secure a white clientele and, 
again, his people being relatively few and scattered and 
of the most intelligent of his race would limit his oppor- 
tunity and increase his competition. 

Though there is a spirit of trust and confidence be- 
tween the negro and the whites at the South, yet it must 
be confessed that it is too much from the business basis, 
rather than from the religious and moral. This indiffer- 
ence between the two races does not amount to any gen- 
eral distrust or hatred. Yet some of our good men be- 
lieve it to have come from a spirit of "disregard" by 
those who did not know actual conditions, or if 
so, did not regard them; that "this interference" 
caused the better white men to stand aloof from 
teaching the negro, leaving it to those who did not 
sufficiently know his primary needs. If there has been 
"mistaken charity and philanthropy from the North," the 
South will regard it as philanthropy and charity, asks 
only that you have regard for her fundamental ideas 



—16— 

and learn that her sentiment is substantial and must be 
considered, that her judgments are honest and formed 
from a daily contact with the conditions. 

From the religious, moral and mental point of view I 
admit the white man at the South has much to do to 
help the negro; from the standpoint of humanity, he is 
generally kind to the negro, helping in his troubles, re- 
lieving in his distress, giving him medical attention in 
sickness, and. when necessary, burying his dead; from 
the vie\^-point of business my people have builded homes 
and cities, cleared forests and cultivated fields, erected 
and operated factories, foundries, furnaces, mines and 
railroads, and in it all we gave the negro the chance to 
show his fitness and to earn a living. 

I may aflfirm that there are few sections of the world 
where an ignorant laborer can by crude cultivation of 
the soil produce more wealth than in the South. Look 
at our $800,000,000 cotton crop, which, of course, is pro- 
duced by white as well as colored labor, and which by a 
scientific system of cultivation and sufficient labor could 
be much increased. Again, let us look to the exports of this 
country for the month of January of this year, in round 
num-bers valued as follows: Corn, $4,000,000 ; wheat, $12,- 
000,000; flour, $7,000,000; other breadstuffs, $1,000,- 
000; meat and dairy products, $16,000,000; cattle, hogs 
and sheep, $3,000,000; mineral oils, $7,000,000; cotton, 
$76,680,000; which figures tell the storj' that cotton is 
the king that is largely redeeming the country's finan- 
cial troubles. However great the agricultural product 
of the South may be, this by no means constitutes the en- 
tire material resources of that section. The teeming 
wealth of her forests has given her lumbering interests a 
place in the building and shipping of the world. The 
treasure of her mountains of ore has enabled the Bir- 
mingham district (in Alabama) alone to fix the price of 
pig iron. Within her bosom is estimated enough bitumin- 
ous coal to furnish fuel for the present demand for a hun- 



—17— 

dred years. The power of her streams carries a quicken- 
ing commerce, lights cities and turns millions of busy- 
spindles that take the white man from competition with 
the negro in other fields and holds out to him opportunity. 

In regard to cotton manufacture, note that Mas- 
sachusetts has 8,904,724 spindles or 34.5 per cent, 
of the total of the country. South Carolina ranks second 
with 3,367,204 or 13 per cent., North Carolina third with 
2,396,703 or 9.3 per cent., and Rhode Island fourth with 
2,173,868 or 8.4 per cent., Georgia fifth with 1,573,450. 
Note that on Aug. 31, 1907, New England's 14,962,517 
active spindles consumed 2,073,393 bales of cotton; in 
the cotton growing States 9,527,964 active spindles con- 
sumed 2,410,993 bales of cotton; in all other States 1,- 
847,648 active spindles consumed 475,902 bales of cotton. 

The story of opportunity and how the South is embrac- 
ing it, is half told, until we consider the relative status 
of the two sections in 1880, Statistics for 1880 : 

New England, 8,632,087 active spindles consumed 1,- 
129,498 bales of cotton; cotton growing States, 561,360 
active spindles consumed 188,748 bales of cotton; all 
other States, 1,459,988 active spindles consumed 252,098 
bales of cotton. 

The value of the product, for the year ending Dec. 31, 
1904, of the cotton mills in the Cotton States was S163,- 
368,059 ; and of those in the New England States, S224,- 
072,562. 

The South will not fail to note that, notwithstanding 
your climatic conditions, long transportation and increas- 
ed price of labor, you have turned to advantage a decreas- 
ed consumption of cotton by making a finer product of 
increased value; that in 1904 from decreased consump- 
tion of raw material and increased value of products, you 
gained $77,586,000 over the spindles of the South, or 
about $20 to every inhabitant of New England. 

I think, however, the cost of cotton manufac- 
ture will be in our favor, when once we have learn- 



—18— 

ed the making of the finer product. It is only a ques- 
tion of having the machine and the trained man to run 
it, for climatic conditions can be made in the mill, and the 
chemical analysis of our water will demonstrate its quali- 
ties for bleaching; while health conditions and oppor- 
tunity will welcome the man. If we may judge by our 
progress of less than thirty years, the future will not be 
slow in transplanting many of New England factories to 
our cotton fields and many of her sons to a welcome cit- 
izenship among us. In all this Titanic effort, the insis- 
tent de^nand of the South is labor — more labor — intelli- 
gent labor. 

The appeal for labor by the United States is answered 
from Europe with a million men a year, whom you land 
and settle to the north and west of us. The opportunity 
therefore for laboring men is ever increasing at the 
South, and no one knows it better than does the average 
negro and the wise leaders of his race. 

If you should ever send to our ports the immigrant it 
would introduce an inferior race to come in contact, con- 
trast, and competition with the negro, stimulating a lau- 
dable contest between them to take and hold the oppor- 
tunities presented each. This more equal contest between 
two races would remove the sharp contrast of condi- 
tion, fitness and capabilities that now exist between the 
whites and the blacks. Would not this diminish the "pre- 
judice" of the white man against the black man? From 
this contest would come another effect quite as import- 
ant: the negro could the better measure himself and learn 
his oivn needs and tvorth. Then seeing and knowing him- 
self as he is, would not his "prejudice" against the white 
race be largely dissipated? 

I believe the white man at the South understands the 
negro best, and is his truest friend ; and I believe the ne- 
gro must come to understand the Southern white man is 
his truest friend. The South must know that in 2^Topor- 
tion as she deals justly in her relations to the negro, so 



-19- 



will the world come to agree with her; just as she fails 
in her duty to him, so ivill her opportunities steal aivay. 
By a providence that neither can fully appreciate they 
have been placed in a relation of inter-dependance that 
they cannot soon escape, and their misunderstandings and 
estrangements, their hopes and faiths, their relations in 
business, and their differences in political and social 
life can best for both races be worked out among them- 
selves. And by the help of God they will do it with heart 
and hand and brawn. Commerce and productivity will 
do more than philanthropy; industry and frugality more 
than charity; labor and honesty more than law. 

The problems of the South, Mr. President, are what 
they are in the North and West. In the making of what 
Emerson calls the "great, intelligent, sensual, avaricious 
Am.erica," world-currents sweep upon us bringing su- 
preme duties. A menace of privilege with us, as with 
you, has for our generation *'put to test the spiritual and 
ethical life on the one hand and a life of bondage to 
the rigorous and exacting demands of the commercial 
order on the other." 

If the fortunate be favored, it can but inspire an un- 
rest, if not a disregard or contempt, in the minds of the 
lower classes, goading to the effort to get at any cost 
into the class of the privileged. The effect is a lowering 
of standards of right among all classes, making for a 
decadence of authority and an excessive individualism, 
causing unfortunate conditions in the nation, not more 
in one section than another. 

The "era of privilege" is always followed by increas- 
ed individual effort. If the individual does not rightly 
understand the institutional complexity of which he is 
a part, he becomes confused and strives to control the 
tide of larger interests that sweep about him, luring, 
threatening, overwhelming. Whether of labor or cap- 
ital, instinctively there is co-operation and combination 
first to control, then to protect interests. It is then dis- 



—20— 

covered that law is the arbitrary boundary between in- 
dividual liberty and collective control, and such combina- 
tions strive to move out or in this line as the community 
of interests may desire or permit. Hence all rights tend 
to become in a "sense regarded as property rights, and 
the individual is too nearly unrestrained so long as he 
can pay." 

There are many evidences of late of the return of the 
Soul of the Crowd to a higher standard of civic righteous- 
ness. The revolution is on to combat our evil tenden- 
cies. If a people will not restrain themselves by the 
laws they make and enforce, they will be restrained by 
the conditions they superinduce. Combinations for sel- 
fish purpose demand of the individual much of his nat- 
ural right and restrain him. He comes to understand 
that there is a new condition he little dreamed of, that 
he must contend with and be limited by. Self-control, if 
not learned from the law writ in constitution and stat- 
utes, he will learn from the social customs and busi- 
ness usages he has proved to be true. 

The accumulation of wealth and its attendant busi- 
ness laws are doing more than merely to limit individ- 
ualistic tendencies. For commerce has carried forward 
a prosperity that all have shared, giving better homes, 
furniture and food, better colleges, schools and libraries, 
better roads, asylums and hospitals with a kindlier con- 
sideration for the unfortunate and the lowly, a more ex- 
act regard for the rights of others, than could be de- 
veloped in the individual life shut in from the needs of 
his fellows. 

Commerce in its assimilations has done and is doing 
even more than this for the American Nation. It has 
given a common interest that is not sectional : it has made 
a common aspiration, if at times too sordid, yet subject to 
regulation ; it has given a common hope that ivill grow into 
a fixed faith. The North, the West and South live only 
in literature and hallowed memories. There is now no 



-21— 



West, it is forest, field, mine and manhood; there is 
now no South, it is agriculture, factory, mine and man- 
hood ; there is now no North, it is manufacture, market, 
finance and manhood. All are Americans, feeding in 
the West, clothing in the South, clearing and distribut- 
ing through the North. No patriots, no literature, no 
laws, could so bind and heal and change the hearts of 
men, as to make of individuals sections that developed 
their own, then to make of provincials one people, with a 
common sympathy and a national spirit. 

This, Mr. President, is the message I bring from the 
South to New England. 



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